Visiting Artist: Roberto Juarez

Juarez often combines many different types of images, using both casual, small sketches he makes almost daily, as well as found botanical and other prints as sources. The dynamic between intended shapes and those that happen in the rush of emotional brushwork convey a physical sense of the artist's pictorial dance. These non-hierarchical images allude to the way artist's through the centuries have fixed the fleeting aspects of nature by using natural shapes and colors of flowers into permanent motifs, into symbol.

Viewers confront his personal experiences and perceptions, mixed with history and myth, transformed into a space that conflates western perspective with eastern illusionism. Juarez is an artist not afraid to travel among artistic disciplines, to draw from myriad sources for his work. Recently, Juarez has used printed materials from popular culture, such as Art Forum advertisements, which he rips up and then collages into studies for much larger paintings.